Capitalize On Big Data To Grow Your Business -- Without Breaking The Bank

John Hall
, ContributorOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Thanks to the dawn of digital, savvy business leaders can now keep a pulse on thousands of customers and prospects with ease, design stunning websites in a few hours, and run social campaigns to capture revenue from droves of Internet users.

There’s another movement on the horizon that’s set to shake up the business world once again. And just as the digitally inept wouldn’t stand a chance in today’s competitive business landscape, those who aren’t quick to capitalize on big data will suffer the same fate.

Why Data? Why Now?

Data is generated by the monstrous amount of information on the web. Major corporations use big data — complex and massive sets of data — to predict market trends, enhance existing products or services, create new products, and learn about customer behavior.

Data analysis can also help businesses adapt, create web content that will draw more visitors, and gain insight into buying behaviors. The more data, the better — companies should publish content on as many social media platforms as possible to gather more than enough data points.

By tuning into the masses, companies can craft content that’s more relevant to their readers. This concept has helped Craig Rayner, head of recruitment at SEO.io, draw in top recruits. He works with companies’ internal recruitment and HR data to produce public stories based on his findings.

Google Analytics:Google Analytics reviews your website traffic and social visitors and reveals how visitors found your website, how long their visits lasted, where they logged on to your site, and more.

Digging Into Data

Large corporations have the upper hand in hiring statisticians to gather, analyze, and report on consumer data, which small companies just can’t afford. Fortunately, there are some free alternatives that can help your company glean powerful insights into customer buying behaviors:

Tweriodand Followerwonk: These programs also gather data from social media and can reveal details like the gender, location, and activity level of the social media account holder.

YouTube Analytics:If your company is active on YouTube, this resource deep dives into demographic information about who’s viewing your videos and where they are.

Making Sense of the Numbers

Once you’re drowning in data points, it’s time to turn those numbers into a game plan for increasing your sales and profits.

Start by reviewing your content, and cross-reference that with data surrounding the age, gender, and location of your site visitors to better understand your reader base. Keep track of your numbers and data by using a spreadsheet or a custom analytics template to stay organized. Adapt your advertising campaigns or develop new ones to more precisely target your actual visitor demographics and hopefully convert visitors into paying customers.

For example, if you discover the majority of your audience is teens when you were trying to target people between 30 and 40, you need to change your message to draw in that audience (or consider embracing your new market!).

You can also consider engaging in social listening by monitoring reactions to your web content and social media posts. Combining social listening with data collection will crystallize potential customers’ perception of your company so you can refine your approach accordingly. Look for answers to questions like:

Did the product or service meet their needs?

Would they make this purchase again?

How likely are they to recommend this product or service to a friend?

Defining Benchmarks for Success

After you’ve pulled out the gems in your data landfill, compare your findings with those of similar or larger companies. Consider:

Factors like the size of the communities where site visitors reside and their activity levels.

The influencers your audience is following aside from your company.

The reasoning behind drastic shifts in site visits.

The success or failure of different advertising mediums and messages.

With data production expected to be 44 times greater in 2020 than in 2009, companies can’t ignore the data revolution’s impact on the digital economy. Wise business owners will investigate every avenue of data collection and start looking at the analytics tools needed to transform a casual Facebook reader or website visitor into a lifelong customer.

John Hall is the CEO of Influence & Co., a company that specializes in expertise extraction and knowledge management that is used to fuel marketing efforts.